Ann Wason Moore: Gift for Gold Coast’s education, health, tourism and hospitality industries

Our hardest workers and hardest-hit industries deserve a little gift, writes Ann Wason Moore. Here’s what she thinks they should get.

PSST ... it’s my birthday today. But boy do I have a gift for you.

Well, a gift for the education, health, tourism and hospitality industries, which is pretty much most of the Gold Coast.

After all, Scomo already sorted our construction crews with the HomeBuilder scheme.

But this is something different. A little smaller, a little more personal, but a little thing from which big things could grow.

I’m calling it the Ann-terprise Bargain.

It’s about giving to some of our hardest workers, as well as some of our hardest-hit industries.

Let’s start with our teachers. There are two weeks left in this unprecedented term and they are crawling and clawing their way to the finish line.

Forget about As and Fs on report cards. I’m expecting just a large, scrawled WTF, such has been their lot.

Teachers need a gift.

It started in term one, as the pandemic panic set in and parents understandably pulled their children from classrooms. Without school actually being cancelled, teachers were working three jobs – teaching those at their desks, those at home on laptops and preparing for the whole thing to go online.

Chatting to a high school teacher last week, he said he spent every day of the Easter school holidays hard at work, under the assumption that in term two teachers would be doing their jobs from home.

When the news came out that he was still expected in the classroom to supervise, he first had to break the news to his own children that they would not get to join the learning-from-home hordes, and then realised his work had not even started.

Supervising learning from Monday to Friday meant he had to dedicate at least one extra day a week to making videos and planning his own lessons.

He has enjoyed the experience overall and is super proud of his students, but barely has the energy to remember his own name.

What this man needs, along with every other teacher in Queensland, is a holiday.

And what our tourism and hospitality industries need is customers.

So I’d like to raise my hand and ask Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk if she would consider gifting every one of these teachers a $100 voucher to be used at any tourism or hospitality business in the state.

OTHER NEWS

REVEALED: Date Queensland will reopen border

Video: Brutal attack on Gold Coast high school student

Massive 108-storey tower to transform Coast suburb

Use it for a meal, use it towards a staycation at the Marriott, use it at a caravan park on the Sunshine Coast – it’s not a stimulus to bank on, but one that is literally about paying it forward.

It is the stimulus to not just spend some time away from work, but to spend some money where it is needed most.

Yes, it would cost a pretty penny but it seems a small price to pay when you consider the state of these industries, not to mention the mental and physical states of our teachers.

Parents are not allowed on school grounds right now due to public health risks, but I have seen some teachers from afar and, guys, it isn’t pretty.

Come on, ScoMo. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas)

Even better, let’s go beyond just our teachers and reward our frontline health workers as well.

Already some tourism businesses are offering these heroes special deals, with Whitsunday resorts uniting for frontline workers.

Daydream Island Resort is offering healthcare workers rooms from $250 a night, Hamilton Island has rooms from $215 a night, and qualia’s Leeward Pavilion has rooms from $700 a night. (Those Pavilion rooms are obviously for the doctors.)

OTHER NEWS

Moment Mayor changed mind on reopening border

Jobs boon as Tweed project plans green lit

Fight for iconic tinnies ‘not over’

Clearly it’s a tricky time for financial rewards, given the Queensland Government has vowed to freeze the wages of all public service workers – including those in education and health sectors – and unions are considering further strike action, but let this be something separate.

It’s not a policy, it’s a gift, a thank you that doubles as a boost to some battered bottom lines.

This would be not just a reward for some of our most deserving workers, but a lifeline for our ailing tourism and hospitality businesses. It is a targeted stimulus – targeted in who would receive it, and who would benefit from it.

Our teachers and health workers have led us through some testing times in the classroom and in the waiting room. Let them lead us to a break that we all surely need – one that our economy desperately needs.

And while I’m at it Ms Palaszczuk, seeing as how it is my birthday, could you pretty please open the damn border?